US federal law promoting the draining of swampland
A U.S. federal law, the Swamp Land Act of 1850,[1] fully titled "An act to enable the State of Arkansas and other States to reclaim the swamp lands within their limits", essentially provided a mechanism for reverting title of federally-owned swampland to states which would agree to drain the land and turn it to productive, agricultural use.[2] Primarily aimed at the development of Florida's Everglades, and transferring some 20 million acres (31,000 sq mi; 81,000 km2) of land in the Everglades to the State of Florida[3] for this purpose, the law also had application outside Florida, and spurred drainage and development in many areas of the United States, including areas around Indiana's Kankakee River,[4] Michigan's Lake St. Clair's shores, and elsewhere, and encouraged settlement by immigrants arriving in the United States after that time. Later considered to have been ecologically problematic, many of its provisions were in time reversed by the Clean Water Act of 1972[5] and later legislation, but its historical effects on U.S. development and settlement patterns remained.
In Louisiana, this law gave the state eight and a half million acres of river swamps and marshes to sell to pay for flood control measures.[6] Under this plan, thousands of acres of virgin cypress in the Atchafalaya Basin were sold to large corporations, often for seventy-five cents per acre or less. In return, the state began the construction of a few low levees and performed periodic dredging. But an increase in flooding in the Basin, due to the Great Raft removal on the upper Atchafalaya River, gave Timber companies more water to float their products to market, allowing the complete destruction of the old growth cypress forests to ensue with little pushback.
^SWAMP LAND ACTS OF 1849, 1850, AND 1860
^Anchor Bay Watershed Management Plan
^Global Climate Change Affecting the Florida Everglades: Anthropogenic Causes for Dis
^Roselawn, Indiana - Back in Time A Glance at History
^PlanetPapers – Wetland Research Paper
^ Guirard, Greg and C. Ray Brassieur. Inherit The Atchafalaya. Lafayette, LA: Center for Louisiana Studies University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2007.
and 24 Related for: Swamp Land Act of 1850 information
The Compromise of1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between...
on until well into his later years. Millard Fillmore became president in 1850, and his father visited him at the White House in 1851. He died in East Aurora...
Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was a law passed by the 31st United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of1850 between...
Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates. Cambridge, MA: Metcalf and Company. p. 108. "Millard Fillmore Thirteenth President • 1850-53". Internet Public...
federal flood control law was the SwampLandActof1850. A flood on the Mississippi River in 1874 led to the creation of the Mississippi River Commission...
July 26, 1854) was the daughter of President Millard Fillmore and Abigail Powers. During her father's presidency from 1850 to 1853 she often served as White...
Indigenous people of the Everglades region Seminole History of Miami, Florida Restoration of the Everglades SwampLandActof1850 Clean Water Act (1972) North...
development. Calloway made preliminary surveys and filed land claims under the SwampLandActof1850. He interested the wealthier Thomas Henry Blythe (1882-April...
of Louisiana. ISBN 1887366768. Seasons of Light in the Atchafalaya Basin. November 1, 1983 by Greg Guirard. ISBN 0685294277. SwampLandActof1850 Article...
proceeds of half of the land grant conveyed to Wisconsin by Congress in the SwampLandActof1850, after the Legislature determined not all of the swampland...
Atikamekw language. The real name of the location of the village of Manawan is Metapeckeka, which means "where swamps emerge" or "savannah that emerges...
The Great Dismal Swamp maroons were people who inhabited the swamplands of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina after escaping enslavement...
enslaver. Passage of the Fugitive Slave Actof1850 increased penalties against runaway slaves and those who aided them. Because of this, some freedom...
ofland west of the then London district and called it the Huron Tract. The Canada Company was the administrative agent for the Huron Tract. An Act of...
September 24, 1831. Breen, Patrick H. (2015). The land shall be deluged in blood: a new history of the Nat Turner Revolt. New York. ISBN 978-0-19-982800-5...
are: California, before statehood in 1850, was only crudely surveyed with the boundaries of Spanish and Mexican land grants (ranchos); since statehood the...
Prairie Story". Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area. "Land Between the Lakes Protection Act" October 1998 Ronald A. Foresta. The Land Between the...
The National Economic Security and Recovery Act (NESARA) is a set of proposed economic reforms for the United States suggested during the 1990s by private...
alternative beginning for the Mormon Trail. In 1850, the United States Congress passed the SwampLandAct providing land grants to build stronger levees. The flood...
federally recognized tribe. The Great Swamp Massacre was committed during King Philip's War by colonial militia of New England on the Narragansett tribe...
undesirable land, often islands or swamps 'near' existing population centers were developed into sprawling factory complexes with hundreds of workers providing...